Supporting many less things is markdown's big advantage. It's a format that makes everything as simple as possible, but no simpler; it's the perfect format for "almost-plain" text like I often want in a readme - mostly plain text, but with headings, bulleted lists and the occasional hyperlink.
Compared to rst it's a lot easier to write links. I hadn't even heard of textile, but its link syntax also seems harder to write than markdown's. WikiCreole might be better, but right now figuring out what syntax a given wiki will support is far more of a crapshoot than using an arbitrary markdown implementation.
Compared to rst it's a lot easier to write links. I hadn't even heard of textile, but its link syntax also seems harder to write than markdown's. WikiCreole might be better, but right now figuring out what syntax a given wiki will support is far more of a crapshoot than using an arbitrary markdown implementation.